Partisan rhetoric and public opinion

Believing our own nonsense

IT'S clear by now that Paul Krugman thinks there is something seriously wrong with Republicans. The theme of yesterday's column was Republican contempt for logic and good-faith policy analysis. Late last week, Mr Krugman's theme was Republican immorality as the basis of our nation's irreconcilable political divisions. Though it is a challenge to accept that a man of Mr Krugman's intelligence truly believes America's ills flow exclusively from the intellectual and moral failures of the people who disagree with him, I don't believe he is arguing in bad faith. He really is that self-righteously Manichean. What drives Mr Krugman absolutely nuts is that people who are wrong about everything are just as self-righteously Manichean as he is. Where do they get off?

Anyway, Mr Krugman's signal lack of charity and gross oversimplification in the following passage from last week offers grist for less vehemently partisan analysis of the state of American public opinion and discourse.

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state—a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society's winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net—morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It's only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That's what lies behind the modern right's fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

This is just silly isn't it? (Free advice: leave always-wrong "two Americas" columns to David Brooks.) Even a glancing familiarity with the literature on American public opinion shows that a very large majority of conservatives—"the other side of American politics"—approve of Social Security and Medicare, the principal institutions of the post-New Deal social safety net. To a first approximation, everybody in the United States is on the side of Mr Krugman's angels. Furthermore, the ideas that individuals are entitled to the fruits of their labour and that taxation beyond necessity is an unfair imposition are so widespread among Americans that it is quite misleading to attribute them to one "side". As Lane Kenworthy puts it in this useful overview of American political attitudes, "Americans are ideologically conservative but programmatically progressive."

Later, Mr Krugman writes:

This deep divide in American political morality—for that's what it amounts to—is a relatively recent development. Commentators who pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to contemplate expanding it.

So belief in the legitimacy of the welfare state fell among members of the Republican Party "relatively recently"? Well, look:

Overall public support for increased safety-net spending hit a low around 1994, in the Contract-with-America era. Since then, support for welfare-state spending has risen above pre-1994 levels, despite a decline in support for increased health and Social Security spending. And this dip is more pragmatic than ideological, reflecting a growing cognizance of the infeasible fiscal trajectories of these programmes. In any case, this is not the picture of a nation in which approximately half the electorate has recently rejected the legitimacy of progressive redistribution. Maybe Mr Krugman has evidence that something extreme has happened since 2008, but I know of none.

There is significant support for increases in progressive redistribution, even among those who say they want less government. Behold:

This data is ten years old, but, again, there's not much reason to think public opinion has recently taken a dramatic turn. (The graphs are from the paywalled version of this 2009 paper by Greg M. Shaw, a political scientist at Illinois Wesleyan University.) The 2006 and 2008 elections suggest a small leftward turn in public sentiment. The 2010 elections suggest a rightward turn, somewhat but not entirely counteracting the voting public's prior leftward tack.

This chart is complicated, isn't it? Terminology matters to a baffling degree. Programmes specifically cast as "welfare" do especially poorly with this group. Even then, half or more of respondents want to maintain or increase current levels of "welfare" spending. But look at "aid to poor people"! Very large majorities of those who think "the less government the better" or that the "free market should handle complex problems without government involvement" support maintaining or increasing levels of aid to the poor. Just don't call it "welfare" or "food stamps"! In any case, this is not a picture of a group of ideologues who believe that "taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft", or who "really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty".

Yet there is something quite significant about the evidently negative rhetorical charge of "welfare" and "food stamps" among smaller-government, freer-markets types. And there is something quite significant about Mr Krugman's evident confusion about American public opinion and his genuine alarm over libertarian "taxation-is-theft" rhetoric. Although Americans left and right have remarkably consistent "ideologically conservative but programmatically progressive" preferences when it comes to redistributive social policy, it benefits political parties and party politicians to greatly exaggerate their differences. Partisan brand identity and distinction is achieved largely through a commitment to a certain stock of rhetorical tropes and symbolic gestures that float almost entirely free of the party's substantive commitments. People are suckers for rhetoric, which is why merely rhetorical differentiation works at both the grocery store and the polling station. It is also why we are prone to believing crazy things about what the other "side" believes. And this leads to a rhetorical atmosphere corrosive to the trust necessary to facilitate compromises over policy that would be agreeable to most everyone. Our problem, and Mr Krugman's, is that we believe our own BS.

This blog goes too far. The Tea Party tapped into a vocal constituency that absolutely, positively *does* regard government spending as a morality play. This constituency wants unemployment benefits ended, fervently does not want the uninsured to receive health-care coverage, has nothing but ill to say about public sector employees, schoolteachers, etc. This constituency bemoans taxes as theft.

Sarah Palin speaks for that constituency in saying that if you let her have God, the Constitution, and guns, then you can keep the change. This constituency regards rugged self-reliance as being the essence of America and of good morality, and "it takes a village" as being the root of bad behavior.

You can say that this constituency is inconsistent in enjoying Federal benefits. Fine, you can say that. But it doesn't change their beliefs -- that per Dr. Krugman, this is a morality issue. You can say that this constituency doesn't speak for all Republicans. Absolutely true. But it's a driving force in primary elections. It's the loudest, most active, and most influential part of the Republican base.

In short, while Krugman exaggerates, he does have his finger on a critical issue: The people who view tax as a moral issue have a powerful voice, and they affect the debate.

This made me chuckle. Yes, perhaps, but it speaks to the later point of the effectiveness of rhetoric. Folks on the left have not historically been very good communicators compared to folks on the right. See: "Death Panels" and "Death Taxes" compared to "End of Life Counseling" and "Estate Taxes".

One persons "gross simplification" is another persons "clarity of message". Perhaps Krugman has learned to steal plays out of the other teams playbook?

"To a first approximation, everybody in the United States is on the side of Mr Krugman's angels."

It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans vigorously championed the idea of privatizing Social Security, was it? (That would have been fun over the last few years.)

"Furthermore, the ideas that individuals are entitled to the fruits of their labour and that taxation beyond necessity..."

Is it reasonable to note that the richest Americans are not rich because of the "fruits of their labour", but because they happen to be rich and can enjoy passive income taxed at dramatically lower rates than people who actually work for all of their income? The whole "I earned it so I'm entitled to it!" is something of a bright, shiny canard when it comes to the top.

Also please note the catalytic effect governmental infrastructure has upon wealth creation. It may (or may not) be the fruits of your labor, but if you lived in, say, Papua New Guinea or Haiti or Somalia you'd still be dirt poor. Someone has to pay for all that infrastructure, and that someone is the person who benefits the most from it towards amassing wealth in excess of survival needs.

And then there's that tricky word "necessity". Tricky because my loopholes are truly necessary as are my expenditures, but the stuff I don't use? Not so necessary. Now split into two groups and discuss politely...

WW -- disagree on most levels with you, specifically that the far right has not successfully sold the idea that taxation is government theft and the myth of the welfare queen to a broad audience. But here was a disturbing little snippet in your post: "This data is ten years old, but, again, there's not much reason to think public opinion has recently taken a dramatic turn." While some of your other data appears valid, and even buttresses your claim that policy support is a liguistic phenomenon, I can't help but wonder why you would cherry-pick 10 year old data and then have the temerity to presume it is still valid after this past decade of American politics.

Nobody with half a brain is going to argue with the fact that Krugman is a "self-righteously Manichean" but the commenters have a point. While it's true that conservatives as a whole don't mind moderate social welfare and taxes, the Tea Party isn't just conservative. They would consider Hayek a communist.

While the often dreary Krugman may irritate, at least he stands by his name and picture, whereas the above sharp criticism hides behind a veiled rubric. And the free advice provided has exactly the value paid.

I regret that since the death of William F Buckley I have no connection with the vast majority, if not the entirety of the conservative movement; their hack-job dilettantism, and the hate-for-profit emanations from their favorite media channel is just depressing. I count it fortunate that the so-called 'left' (and W.W. is right to point out that there really is no 'left'), is equally, if not more ineffective and, perhaps I should risk the term, idiotic.

The bizarre tea-pot movement, a collective of recipients of government largesse shouting obscenities and waving weapons, *does* believe its own BS, replacing dynamism for actual programmatic content. But much of this comes from the West, where there is a deep tradition of government land-ownership and employment colliding with delusions of independence.

Astonishing is that W.W. in Iowa City is using the hapless - and lonely - Krugman to make this worn point. Perhaps the stock of political thuggery oozing out of Fox News just wasn't loud enough.

This bit seems a bit dismissive as well: "Maybe Mr Krugman has evidence that something extreme has happened since 2008, but I know of none." Are we to presume that nothing extreme, say, formation of a "grass-roots" right-wing extremist faction has not developed since 2008? Perhaps we should pretend that the election of a black man who lived in Muslim countries in his youth has not brought the xenophobes and bigots out in force? Mayhap we could shut our eyes to passage of a quite moderate health-care reform in the face of insurance company backed virtiol, brandishing swatikas and hammer-and-sickle logos on portraits of the sitting president. I'm not quite sure why Mr Krugman or others should not assume something extreme has happened since 2008.

If we split "social net" support between types generally perceived as benefiting White people, like Medicare and Social Security, and those perceived as benefiting poor people of color, like food stamps, cash assistance and school lunches, the disconnect between "smaller social net" and "don't cut Social Security" becomes clear.

Had Krugman said, "The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others who aren't like them, no matter how needy, amounts to theft." he would have been much closer to the mark. The correlation between the strength of the social safety net and the racial/cultural homogeneity of a country has been established elsewhere. The problem, of course, is that without addressing other forms of institutional racism, it is absolutely true that the people most likely to need the social net are those at the greatest institutional disadvantage.

If Mr. Krugman were a semi-educated talk show host, his excesses would be more understandable. He is, however, one of the premier economists of his generation. He is destroying his credibility and insulting those of us who are trying to understand these difficult times. Krugman is a facile writer who can illuminate complex issues. No more propaganda professor.

I'm proud of this post. Nothing in my experience of Americans has ever led me to believe that we are ideologues in the sense of having a small number of principles on which our answers to every question are based.

Of course we are not nationally the tea party or the left or even centrists. Anybody who gets out and meets their neighbors knows we are not. On blogs and television, yes, we are those bozos, but that just shows the hazard of converting analog people to digital.

As a side-comment the shift in view on 'welfare' may be partly driven by the left's [irritating!] efforts to re-cast what is essentially generosity-driven 'charitable' support as a 'right' for the recipients. This seems to be driven by the same ideology that dislikes tests in schools, because some people might feel badly about doing less well. So welfare 'rights' are justified because they improve take-up.

We may need to devote more attention to how re-casting welfare-as-a-right makes the giver feel!

Does Krugman even write his own column anymore? He's such a ridiculous caricature of a political hack, not to mention sometimes directly contradictory to his previous utterings, its almost like he has a satirist writing in his place. Maybe he is outsourcing to the Onion.

It's hard to even put in the effort of reading this post when it uses Krugman as a jumping off point.

By the way, there has been a great deal very, very wrong with the Republican Party since G.H.W. Bush left the White House. Rove's 50%+1 politics was the last straw for me. Before, I always voted Republican for President; since, never, nor will I until the GOP attempts to appeal to the middle third of the country, and drives their lunatic fringe out of the mainstream again.

This is a good piece, except I disagree with this line: "Partisan brand identity and distinction is achieved largely through a commitment to a certain stock of rhetorical tropes and symbolic gestures that float almost entirely free of the party's substantive commitments."

The problem is that you do get very different legislation when the Republicans or Democrats are in charge, that mirrors to some extent the rhetoric. There's a lot of BS, but there is still consequences to elections.